


Afterimage

by Psuedo_sweetheart



Series: Hearts of Gold [5]
Category: Andromeda Six (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29904072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psuedo_sweetheart/pseuds/Psuedo_sweetheart
Summary: “Your glow is back.”Blinking rapidly, Boba looks down at herself, realizing as she does, that he’s right.  She’s glowing enough that she isn’t sure how she didn’t notice in the shadows of the trees, and it doesn’t seem to be fading away with the adrenaline.“You've been lit up ever since I saw you pulling yourself out of that pit.”
Relationships: Damon Reznor/Original Female Character(s), Damon Reznor/Traveler
Series: Hearts of Gold [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026270
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

“I said it’s time to do some combat training. If you think you’re setting foot on Orion, you’ll need to square up first,” Calderon says, in his usual no nonsense tone.

Boba winces, but nods, “I understand.”

Calderon pauses, giving her a considering look before speaking again.

“I understand this will be difficult for you, but it’s necessary for your sake and the sake of the crew.”

Nodding again, Boba swallows the lump in her throat, “I do understand, Calderon. I’m going to do my best, I won’t let you down.”

A small smile quirks Calderon’s lips, and he gives a stiff nod, “I know you won’t. You’ll need to be comfortable with the combat style you need to stick with,” he went on. “Since we have several specialists on board, you have a pick of shooting and firearms, close combat and knives, and hand to hand combat and defense.”

He crosses his arms over his chest and gives her a pointed look.

“So, what’ll it be?”

“What do you think would be best?” Boba asks, wringing her hands together. She feels like she didn’t know enough about any of the options to make a good choice.

“Ultimately, it’s what you’re comfortable with. But…” Calderon looks her over, his brows furrowing in thought. “With your talent in dancing, I’d say close combat might work well for you, but I don’t know how well you’d handle up close violence. With shooting you can have distance and set the gun to stun, but you’d still eventually need to learn how to fight in close quarters anyway. Everyone on the crew, even if they use one fighting style predominantly, know a bit of all three- it’s the best way to stay alive.”

“So I can work with my strength, or work with my weakness,” Boba murmurs, more to herself, than to Calderon. 

“It isn’t a weakness, to not want to harm others,” Calderon interrupts her thoughts. “It’s a belief that more people in the universe should have.”

“How long does a stun work?” she asks.

Calderon looks pleased she asked, “It depends a little bit on where you hit someone, how many times, and how big they are, but for the most part, one shot lasts 30 minutes.”

“So on a long mission like what we plan on Orion…”

“It would make things more dangerous for us,” Calderon says. “But, for some people, that isn’t a good enough reason not to use it. Others are more pragmatic and choose it or not based on what they know about a mission and their own instincts.”

Boba lets her gaze wander as she thinks it over. The thought of losing one of the crew isn’t tolerable, but neither is killing another person who could very well be just as important to someone else. For the most part, Boba doesn’t believe in good and evil, there’s both in everyone, and she hates the thought of playing judge, much less judge, jury, and executioner, all in the span of a few adrenaline fueled moments.

“Can I try the guns and the close combat, and see which one works better for me? Maybe if I’m good at close combat, like you think I might be, I would have time to learn a bit of both.”

Calderon hesitates, but then nods in agreement, “Start with the close combat training. If Aya thinks you have a natural talent for it, I’ll allow you to multitask on learning. Otherwise, though you’ll need to focus and pick one to improve on.”

Boba smiles, “Thanks, Calderon.”

“No problem. Now get going, training at the docks in five.”

He strolls off to the docks, his shoulders tight, and Boba goes back to her room to change.

  
Calderon was right. Dancing did give Boba an edge in close combat. She knows how bodies move, and she especially knows how her body moves. By the end of the training, Aya is all smiles.

Feeling flushed with accomplishment, Boba heads toward where Damon and Vexx had been lounging, although thankfully, Vexx is up and talking to Aya, so she doesn’t have to face him quite yet.

“So why aren’t you teaching me?” Boba asks Damon, as she pats the sweat from her skin with a towel.

Damon shrugs, with that smug smirk of his, “I fight on instinct, and you can’t teach instinct. If I taught you before you even had the basics down it would be counterproductive. Besides, I have no patience for rookies.”

Boba cocks her head to the side, “Are you saying you’re never going to teach me anything?”

Damon’s lips purse, before he bursts into snickering laughter.

“Oh, Bambi. I’ll teach you all sorts of things if you want, but none of it would be useful in battle.”

Damon steps closer in that looming way of his, and Boba can feel how her heart rate increases throughout her whole body, like a sudden surge of awareness, focused entirely on him. 

“If you’re really interested, I’m sure we could arrange some private sessions.” He picks up a lock of her hair that had fallen from the ponytail she’d had it in, running slender fingertips along the length of it, before letting it fall back down to her shoulder. “I’d show you all I know I know, but… you might wanna get some more training done to build up your stamina before that. Because I wouldn’t be giving you any time to rest in between.”

With how close he is, it’s exceedingly difficult for Boba to concentrate, but she can’t just let a statement that inaccurate go by her.

“I’m a dancer,” she says firmly, looking him in the eye. “I probably have just as much stamina as you, and I _don’t_ have a refractory period.”

Damon’s eyes go wide, and for a moment, Boba thinks his jaw might fall open, but instead a slow grin curls his lips, and Boba suddenly realizes that just before he laughs, Damon’s shoulders silently shake, as if they’re the first part of him that feels amusement.

She finds this so endearing, it makes her heart ache, and she wishes she could study him for hours, so she could learn the rest of him, in the way he seemed to learn her with just one glance.

“I knew you weren’t totally innocent,” he finally says, after his laughter fades. “Ever since that time at The Arc, when I said we could try to find out what you were good at, and I could literally see your expression map out the gutter your thoughts had dived right into.”

“I’m inexperienced, not uneducated,” Boba huffs, clutching her towel into her fist and crossing her arms over her chest.

Damon steps even closer, his smirk growing again when Boba immediately flusters. She can feel the heat under her skin as he traces his finger down the column of her neck.

“I want to make you experienced…” He leans in even closer, till she can smell the mint on his breath, as he whispers. “I could do so many things to you, and I keep wondering which things will make you scream for me.”

Boba let out a shaky breath, clutching her towel so tightly it almost feels like the cotton might cut into her hand, as her head spins too fast and quick for her to come up with a response. 

Luckily, she doesn’t need to because Damon pulls away, grinning in wicked amusement as he spins her around and slings his arm over her shoulder. 

Before she knows it, Boba has been roped into a betting match, and despite her immediate desire to bet on Vexx, Boba remembers just in time she’s trying not to care about him anymore and bets on Aya instead, which turns out for the best.

Aya wins, quite easily even, to Boba’s surprise, but then again, she still has that childish belief that Vexx is the best at everything, no matter how much she tries to smother it under truth, logic, and ruthless grief. 

Slapping Vexx companionably on the back, Damon turns back to Boba, “If you’ll excuse me, your majesty. I gotta get our newest leech upstairs for a checkup.”

Avoiding looking at Vexx, Boba just nods, hurrying to busy herself with gathering her things together.

***

After giving herself a firm talking to about not getting her hopes up, Boba heads to the medbay, determined to find out if there’s any new evidence about who Vexx really is, and if there’s a way to help him. 

Ryona’s mister makes the medbay a far less intimidating place than Boba would normally find it. The scent is something she can’t quite place, or even find words for, but it somehow eases her mind, and Boba feels like her mind needs every bit of ease it can get.

She feels less at ease when she notices Damon lounging in the medical chair, reading a book. On one hand, she’s glad she and Ryona won’t be alone with Vexx, on the other hand, she isn’t sure she wants any more witnesses than there has to be, for what is going to undoubtedly be another gutting conversation. 

She’s tired of her pain being on display, she wants to do what she always does, and hoard it away in her chest where it can ache in peace.

Not that that seems to help in any way.

Ryona is sitting at her desk, lifting her gaze from her computer screen and smiling softly as she calls out a greeting. 

“Boba. What brings you here?”

Boba nods at where she can see Vexx through the gap in the curtain around his bed, his breathing slow and even, two round disks attached to his temples, monitoring him as he sleeps. 

“I was wondering how he’s doing. If you’ve found anything new.”

Ryona gestures her over to the computer screen, and shows her Vexx’s brainwaves, a portrait of his mind in serrated lines that mean absolutely nothing to Boba.

“His brainwaves are normal in sleep.” She flips back to when Vexx was still awake, and even Boba can see the astounding difference. Ryona then flips open another tab, and shows Boba the normal way brainwaves look on someone who’s awake, and she can see the difference there as well. 

On a normal brain, the waves don’t look terribly different between awake and asleep, particularly to her untrained eye, but Vexx’s brainwaves awake and asleep were something else entirely. 

Awake, they look needle sharp, bouncing around haphazardly, like they were trying to pierce their way through Vexx’s brain, but his mind kept sending them scattering as he tried to protect himself. She felt tired just looking at it.

“So, Zovack did mess with his mind, then?”

“Yes, it is what we suspected. The very tissue in Vexx’s brain has been tampered with.”

Abruptly, Boba realizes she needs to sit down, and she perches on the edge of the medical chair, feeling comforted by the warm closeness of Damon, particularly when he nudges her gently with his elbow, as if to acknowledge her feelings without the need for words.

Ryona goes on to explain in more detail, and Boba tries to take it all in, at the same time she tries to decide how she feels about it all.

The discussion moves on to how to help Vexx, Damon finally jumping in to encourage Ryona, when she insists doing so is above her skill level, before he tells Boba about what Alisa found. 

Another person like Vexx, except the procedure hadn’t been completed, leaving them a vegetable. He tells her about how it could have been worse, how Vexx could have been infused with Orionite, and Boba shivers, swallowing down an acidic rush of saliva.

“Signs do suggest that the procedure Vexx endured wasn’t entirely successful, even in this state. If it was, we wouldn’t be seeing the glimpses of Vexx’s true self that we have been,” Ryona says.

“I wouldn’t particularly say that’s a good thing…” Damon mutters, a strange expression on his face, as he drops onto the medical chair again, with a long sigh.

It makes something inside Boba that had just been beginning to feel like it might be safe to thaw out, freeze right back up again. What does that mean? 

Boba isn’t stupid. Well, she isn’t _that_ stupid, she knows Vexx and Damon are both killers, in a different way than the rest of the crew. 

Vexx had never specifically told her about sniping people, but his stories had always been full of breathtakingly casual violence. And Damon enjoys killing people, although she can’t wrap her mind around the why of it, other than, ‘he grew up on the streets of Cursa.’ And just like every other person, Damon can’t help where or how he grew up. If learning to enjoy killing people was something he had to do to survive, then Boba refuses to judge him for it.

Instead, she judges him for how he uses those animal instincts of his now- and all she’s seen Damon do is use them to protect this crew. That’s good enough for her.

But if Damon of all people, thinks Vexx might have been better off erased, and replaced with a puppet, what kind of man was he really? 

“What does that mean?” she asks out loud, her voice far colder than she means it to be.

Damon stares at her expressionless for a second, before relaxing back into the seat with another heavy sigh.

“I just mean that sometimes, all or nothing is better. Some kinds of fucked up, you can’t ever make work again.”

Boba’s heart feels like it plummets straight to her toes and then perhaps even straight through the ship and into the cold, vast, expanse of space, and she can tell Damon reads it directly on her face, because he gives her that same pitying look he had when he’d first given her music box back and it had failed to help her as intended.

She wishes she hadn’t asked. She wishes she had assumed Vexx was more horrible than she ever knew, that would be far less devastating to discover than the fact that he might remain broken forever, no matter if his brain is pieced back together again or not.

Peering through the opening in the curtain, she takes in the face that looks far more familiar to how she remembers, all the new venomous features disappearing in the peacefulness of sleep. 

What she wouldn’t give for him to open his eyes and smile that sharp grin of his, the affectionate glint in his eye, softening it into something safe and familiar.

“What does all of this mean?” she asks Ryona softly, still staring at Vexx.

“I don’t know yet, but Boba… it’s possible that when he betrayed you, he didn’t do it willingly.”

A sob breaks free from Boba’s chest before she can stop it, and she covers her mouth, furiously blinking back tears.

Ryona puts a comforting hand on her shoulder, and Boba gratefully leans into the touch, letting it anchor her to the reality outside of herself enough that she manages to swallow back all but a few tears, that she quickly wipes away with the back of her hand.

“We’ll find a way to help him, I promise.” 

Ryona’s voice is firm and determined, and Boba believes her fully and immediately. She has to.

“Oh good. I missed the pity party.”

Vexx’s voice is groggy as he sits up, rubbing his eyes. 

Ryona shifts the curtain aside, saying something Boba can’t hear past the urge to throw herself in Vexx’s arms. She can tell Vexx notices, because he goes stiff, watching her warily as if she were some sort of predator.

It makes a complex blend of embarrassment, astonished amusement, and devastating grief, crash through her, but Boba just smiles.

She thinks she’s getting the hang of smiling when she wants to scream.

Vexx can only seem to look at her from the corner of his eye, just the way she’s been looking at him the past few days, but not anymore.

Now, she wants to see every single nuance on his face, she doesn’t want to miss one more moment, because there’s hope again, that he could care about her, the way she helplessly cares about him. 

“How’s it going, Princess?” he asks, his voice still rough with sleep.

‘ _The worst_ ,’ she wants to say. 

Except, that’s not entirely true, because Boba is a firm believer that things can always be worse, and it’s better to focus on what makes things not so bad, so you don’t break down screaming.

“Well, we’re both still alive,” she says, as lightly as she can manage.

Vexx’s face twitches into what she thinks is a flicker of a wince, and she can’t help but to immediately offer comfort, grabbing his hand in hers and squeezing.

“I think it’s a good thing.”

Vexx doesn’t say anything, just staring down at their connected hands as if he’d suddenly been handed a tarantula, and Boba almost jerks away, but at the last moment, decides to wait and see what he does.

After a moment, the tension eases from his shoulders, and although the hardness doesn’t leave his features, he gives her hand a minute squeeze back, like he can’t quite remember how friendly affection works, but is trying anyway.

That tiny gesture has Boba feeling like the sun has risen after weeks of darkness, and she quickly blinks away the blinding gratitude that threatens to make her cry, yet again. 

“Ryona told me what happened to you,” she says softly.

She wants to get this out of the way, she wants to rip the bandage off, and see what Vexx thinks of the wound.

“Oh yeah. And what does the dear old doc, say?”

Realizing, he isn’t going to tell her, Boba smiles again, trying not to feel too let down. They’re still making progress.

“What I needed to hear, I suppose.”

Boba sighs, feeling exhausted, hollowed out and delicate as an empty eggshell. She starts to rise to her feet, her grip loosening on Vexx’s hand.

She’s startled when his grip tightens in response.

“Don’t go.”

There’s still none of that soft affection she misses in his expression, his eyes just as shadowed as they had been yesterday and the day before that.   
Boba remembers looking Damon in the eye again for the first time since he’d suggested selling her out to Zovack. How she’d had to face the fact that she might have been wrong about him, and not seen anything to indicate she’d been right, when she finally grasped enough courage to look. 

But, she had been right.

She sits back down near the end of the bed.

Vexx lets out a long breath and runs his hands through his hair.

“I heard the captain is letting you train with guns and close combat.”

Boba nods, “Yes. I think he wants to give me the best chance he can to get away without killing anyone.”

And already this topic is not safe for them. It makes Boba’s heart ache, although it lessens slightly, when Vexx just nodds.

“You did an impressive job. I...” he pauses, looking like he isn’t sure of the truth of what he’s about to say. “I remember you dancing. I think.”

“Yes.” Boba has to clear her throat of tears before she can go on. “There was an old dance studio in the palace where- I was the only one who still used it.”

“I used to make up stupid moves and try to trick you into believing they were old folk dances,” Vexx suddenly laughs, before covering his mouth like he isn’t sure he’s allowed to do that.

Just like always, his laugh makes her laugh, and Boba finds herself adding to the memory with her own recollection.

“I still can’t believe, ‘The Worm,’ is really a dance move,” she giggles. “I thought certain that was a made up one.”

“They’re all made up,” Vexx snickers, and she remembers him saying that before too, and it brings tears to her eyes.

“That’s true,” she admits, still smiling.

The laughter fades and silence falls between them, and she catches Vexx’s eyes glazing over, staring at nothing. 

Worry twists her insides, and she speaks before she can think better of it.

“You have to get better, Vexx.”

Her voice breaks on his name, as she realizes she hasn’t called him by name to his face since… before.  
  
Vexx seems to realize this as well, if his sharp inhale, and the way his hand spasms in hers is any indication.

She forces a smile to her lips, “You deserve to get better.”

His brows furrow and he stares down at their hands again.

“Boba… after everything I’ve done, I don’t even understand how you can say that. I don’t deserve to be here. I don’t deserve any of this.”

“You didn’t deserve what happened to you,” she insists. “I meant what I said about not demanding more pain from people. After you find what you need on Orion, I want you to stay and work with Ryona, and be my friend again- if that’s what you want.”

He squeezes her hand so hard it hurts, but it's a good hurt, because along with it, Boba sees a sliver of the agony he’s been hiding from her.

Vexx’s eyes are squeezed shut, emotions flickering across his face to quickly for her to read, as if someone was tuning in one of those ancient radios, switching from channel to channel in a cacophony of input.

It breaks her heart all over again, to have to watch him fight for control of his own mind, and she squeezes his hand back as tightly as he had hers earlier, trying to anchor him to her.

She doesn’t know if it helps or not, but he does take a deep, shuddering, breath, and finally opens his eyes. 

‘ _There you are_ ,’ Boba thinks to herself, as she sees the same determination in those forest green eyes that she remembers from before. 

“I’ll get better.”

Boba grins, a huff of laughter on her lips, “I know.”


	2. Chapter 2

‘ _So this is battle_.’

Boba is still clumsy with her gun, but she still shoots with almost reckless abandon. The K’Merii are easy to distinguish from her friends, and her gun is on stun, so she sees no need to be overly careful. 

It’s a strategy that seems to be working for her- no one has managed to get within an arms length of her. 

Until they do.

She doesn’t see the man till he’s already almost on her, a knife flashing in his hand. Boba dodges instinctively, then trips the man just like Aya taught her, a thrill of victory zipping through her veins once she shoots him and he goes limp.

She’s still grinning when June pats her shoulder as he rushes by.

“Good work, Boba,” he nods, grimly.

Then he shoots the soldier, a perfectly round hole appearing right between his eyes, with a trickle of blood slowly dripping down the bridge of his nose.

Boba’s flush of victory, instantly transforms into something hot and sour that grips her heart in its fist. 

She turns and retches, then crouches down and throws up again.

The floor starts to rumble under her boots, and she can hear Calderon yelling for them all to get out.

Boba tries to stand to her feet, but just as she does, the floor drops out from underneath her.

***

As Boba clings to what had been the floor she’d been standing on, fingers starting to go numb, she thinks about letting go.

There’s a part of her that’s been exhausted, blinking slowly and dreaming of never having to open their eyes again, from the time she can remember. 

She’s tired, and she’s tired of being tired. Even when she smiles and dances and loves people, she feels like she’s on the verge of collapsing in on herself, just like this building is. 

Boba thinks if she believed in the afterlife, she’d let go right this second. She’d let go and wake up from this nightmare, in her sister’s arms, and she’d tell her all about the awful dream she’d had.

Nerissa would run her fingers through her hair and assure her it was all over now, that she was safe. She’d open their music box- they would both hum along with the lullabye, and watch the tiny dancer within, till Boba remembered what safety actually felt like. 

But Boba doesn’t believe in the afterlife, not really. If people truly believed perfection lived just on the other side of a blade, or a bullet, or a handful of pills, just on the other side of a lost breath, why wait? Why suffer needlessly through a grey, misery inducing, interlude? No, Boba doesn’t believe in the afterlife or perfection, and yet… 

And yet, she can’t help but imagine having to tell Nerissa that she gave up. That once again, she took the easy way out, and let everyone down. 

And even more than Boba is tired, right down to her cells, like the atoms of her body might stop clinging to each other and spill out into the universe to find some other existence that is less prone to despair- even more than that, Boba is tired of giving up. 

She has reached the end of things she has left to give up on, and now there is only herself, clinging to herself, with bloody, exhausted, fingertips, still wounded from being shattered and forgotten and haphazardly slapped back together, and told to navigate the universe.

So, she’s going to fucking do it. She’s going to navigate this damn pit, and then she’s going to navigate the fucking nightmare lab, and then she’s going to navigate to her friends. To the new home that found her when she needed it the most. 

Boba tightens her grip so much she can’t feel a single thing, even though she can see blood welling around the places in her palm where the cement is digging in, and she reaches with every single muscle and ligament in her body, till she’s clinging to her existence with both hands.

Her heart is beating in her chest harder than she’s ever felt it beat before, like it’s finally been shocked into life, and Boba is half astonished, as she attempts to heave her entire body weight up, that she actually inches her way forward, onto the concrete slab. 

She’s almost, almost, there, when a pair of warm hands, grab her arms and yank her into a hard embrace, and Boba is of half a mind to be furious that her chance to save herself was snatched from her grasp, when she looks up into sapphire bright, blue eyes, is reminded of Damon’s existence, and decides she doesn’t mind so much, as long it’s him. 

Damon had pulled her away from the ledge so thoroughly, they’d both fallen backward into the rubble, which turns out to be a good thing, as the place where Damon had been standing fell away behind them, crashing into the pit below with a sound like offkey, rumbling, thunder. 

“The fuck were you thinking, almost dying like that!?” Damon snaps, still wrapped around her, protecting her body with his.

Abruptly, Boba remembers hearing once that anger is just a mask for fear, so she smiles widely to comfort Damon, before joking.

“Sorry. Newbie, navigational error.”

Damon sits up, his eyebrows looking ready to take flight straight off his face as he looks her over for injuries and Boba couldn’t have held back a laugh at the sight if he’d had a blade to her throat. 

Apparently deciding she’s not concussed, his expression softens into a playful scoff a second later, as he stands to his feet.

“You’re high on adrenaline,” he says, reaching down to help her up.

“Maybe,” Boba admits.

She lets him pull her up, and dusts herself off, before looking around the atrium. 

There are bodies scattered among the wreckage, and her heart aches, but only for a moment, because the building groans, like it’s in its death throes, and a vicious gladness sweeps through her instead. 

Boba’s never hated a place before, but this place deserves to be hated and deserves to be killed, and even if it takes both her and Damon with it, she’s glad it will be gone from the universe. 

“Well, keep it up for awhile longer,” Damon says, as squeezes her hand tight. 

Then they run. 

***

“Let’s go over there,” Damon nods toward the treeline.

He hadn’t let go of her hand since they’d arrived, and he tugs her along before she can respond. 

The shade of the trees is somehow comforting to Boba, even though she’s never been in a forest before. She half wants to putter around and explore, but she can feel the adrenaline draining out of her, leaving exhaustion in its wake.

“So, you losing it yet, or what?” Damon asks, once he’s apparently satisfied with their location.

Boba peers up at him curiously. 

“Do I look like I am?” she asks. 

She feels strangely at ease, all things considered. Perhaps because she’s finally made up her mind. Somehow, someway, hanging over that pit with her eyes closed, she’d found that spark of determination that she didn’t think she had. 

“No,” he replies immediately.

His gaze flickers over her, and at first she thinks he’s checking her for injuries again, or perhaps just convincing himself she’s really here and safe, when he speaks again.

“Your glow is back.”

Blinking rapidly, Boba looks down at herself, realizing as she does, that he’s right. She’s glowing enough that she isn’t sure how she didn’t notice in the shadows of the trees, and it doesn’t seem to be fading away with the adrenaline.

“You’ve been lit up ever since I saw you pulling yourself out of that pit.”

Boba laughs, softly, “Yeah. I think I found something I needed in that pit.”

Damon scowls far more ferociously than she would expect at that statement, and Boba is even more surprised, when he abruptly pulls her close, sliding his arm around her waist.

“Yeah, well, you aren’t allowed to go peering into death valley every time you need a pick me up, Princess.”

Boba tries to hold back her smile, but can’t, and he scowls all the more.

“Why not?” she asks. “Isn’t that what you do?”

“That is not what I do, and I am a cold-blooded, assassin, not a dancing princess.”

Boba’s smile falters and slides off her face, and she shakes her head, “I’m not a dancing princess anymore, Damon.”

Damon sighs, tilting his head till their foreheads were leaning together, “Yeah, I know, sorry. You were pretty badass today, you just had me worried for a minute back there. I didn’t expect you to get that close to death.”

He pauses, staring at her intently, and even the shadowy depths of the trees, she can see the blue of his eyes.

“I also didn’t think I’d care this much about you dying...”

Boba can feel her eyes flutter wide open, at a confession like that from him. Even if she knew Damon cared about her, she didn’t really expect him to admit it in words.

She’s less surprised when he leans down, and kisses her. 

Boba finds herself utterly unprepared for how a simple press of skin, can feel so profound, as if it’s reverberating through her entire body and into to her soul. 

Damon’s mouth still somehow has a trace of mint, making the kiss strangely warm and cool at the same time, and she finds herself chasing the sensation, cautiously running her tongue along Damon’s bottom lip.

Damon crowds her back against the trunk of a tree as he deepens the kiss, one hand curling around the back of her neck, the other sliding to her hip, and she’s held in place, unable to stop herself from trembling. 

So she stops trying, instead wrapping her arms around Damon, trying to get even closer, wanting to close every gap between their bodies, and learn how he likes to be touched.

He pulls back too soon, and Boba blinks at him through the streaming sunlight, wondering why he’d pulled away. She isn’t anywhere near done.

She wants to stay here with him here in this moment for hours, warm and safe, with the wind rustling through the leaves and the birds singing in the treetops.

At least some of that must show on her face, because Damon chuckles.

“Keep looking at me like that, and I’ll drag you back onto the ship right now.”

“That’s not much incentive for me to stop,” Boba points out.

She laughs as he leans in and presses a line of kisses down her jaw, to her lips for one more kiss.

“Neither is that,” she says, breathlessly.

When he pulls back, his eyes are soft as he looks down at her.

“Well, I don’t particularly enjoy doing that with debris stuck in my hair. I’ll be sure to take my time with you later.”

Boba can feel the heat rising to her cheeks, and she bites her bottom lip, trying not to think to hard about that particular statement.

Damon chuckles again, and pulls her away from the tree, wrapping his arm around her as they head back toward the clearing.

Calderon struts down the ramp of the ship just as they hit the treeline, yelling at them to all get inside, although he pauses at the sight of her and Damon, wrapped up in each other, his lips curling into an approving smile.

With Damon’s warmth around her, walking toward the ship that’s become home, Boba feels happier than she has in a long time. 

The late afternoon sun fills her with the last of its heat, and she knows that when it rises again tomorrow, she’ll be facing a different kind of day.

The thought of it has her quietly smiling to herself, excited for the things to come.

Until.

A gunshot rings in her ears, so loud she’s briefly deafened to the world around her, the silence almost just as terrifying as the sound.

Goosebumps rise to the surface of her skin, the very air seeming to have changed into something hostile and about to smother her.

Just as the terror starts to ebb as Boba realizes she isn’t in pain, a low groan reaches her ears.

She turns toward the sound to see Vexx, his face gone deathly pale over the dark red stain, blooming like a flower under his fingers, soaking through the fabric of his jacket. 

“No!” she screams, already running toward him.

She sees his lips cup around her name, although it’s too faint for her to hear, and then he falls.


End file.
